This Side of Paradise
by Meresger
Summary: A curse is broken and the aftermath is far from a happy ending. (mentions of Swanfire) (rated M for language)
1. The Blight

Title: This Side of Paradise

Disclaimer: I don't own _Once Upon A Time_. If I did, Adam  & Eddy would be fired and picking up litter by the side of the highway.

Summary: A curse is broken and the aftermath is far from a happy ending. (mentions of Swanfire) (rated M for language))

Genre: Angst/Family, Hurt/Comfort

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 **Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

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 **THIS SIDE OF PARADISE**

 **CHAPTER ONE**

 **THE BLIGHT**

Something was wrong with Emma. David noticed it at the hospital, the tension in her shoulders, how quickly she handed the baby off to be passed around and shuffled her way to the bathroom to shower and change.

While Snow initially insisted that Emma was just tired from the labor and being bombarded by family and extended honorary family, as the hour approached for the new prince's coronation at Granny's and Emma hadn't yet shown or even picked up her phone while Hook was already toasting with his "mates" and insisting his wife just wanted herself and their son to look their best, she had to concede to her husband that it wasn't like their daughter to ignore them for the past two days. Or, perhaps, more accurately, it was like their daughter _used to be_ but hadn't been since the whole Dark One mess when she'd retreated from everyone.

After ensuring that Neal was being watched and entertained by the gathering crowd and away from any sharp objects the toddler might find interest in, Snow and Charming jumped into their pickup and headed to the gray Victorian a block down from Miflin Street out front of which was parked a familiar yellow Volkswagen Bug but no sign of Emma fastening in her younger son to head to Granny's. It was still full of the fast-food wrappers and unfinished paperwork that David had noted when last parked at the Sheriff's Station, before Emma went into labor and he drove her to the hospital because of, well... Zelena.

"The least Killian could have done is cleaned out her car for her," sighed Snow, not particularly feeling the love for her son-in-law of late. He seemed to have done nothing but party me-harty over having a son since holding the baby. She was starting to sympathize a little with Gold who'd remained in the hallway glaring at the gathering, not remotely happy that Emma had talked him into giving the pirate back his hand _permanently_ so he could hold his infant son properly.

"He has two hands now. He should be using them both to help Emma!" she huffed. "Why couldn't she have fallen for someone more like you?"

"Because she fell for someone who was more like her, I suppose, and by that it seems more like my brother than me," shrugged David with a slight wince, a fact he'd had to come to grips with over the years as he saw less and less of himself and more and more of the man he met in The Underworld in his daughter.

Emma had eventually revealed that she wasn't quite the long-standing hero and advocate for justice that she'd led Henry and all of them to believe when she came to Storybrooke. She was actually a criminal up until only a year before and only gave that up out of an opportunity to work of a probation violation as a bountyhunter for the company of a woman who died trying to apprehend her.

It was a shocking and disappointing revelation, to be honest, though no more David imagined than Emma finding out about the spell they had cast on her before her birth, a spell that for all they knew, was directly or somewhat responsible for the self-centered tendencies she'd stopped fighting against since becoming involved with Killian Jones.

But Hook made her happy and that's what mattered. That's what they had to tell themselves, anyway.

It was increasingly hard, though, of late to keep repeating that mantra.

After all, sometimes encouraging someone to do what seemed to make them happy, what seemed to be the way by which they accepted and were accepted into a new kind of life, backfired quite badly.

Case-in-point, the front garden, withered even though it was well into spring, just like most of the other gardens in town. The latest Storybrooke magical crisis that struck about a month ago was more of an eye-soar than anything life-threatening, though there was some initial panic concerning food shortages.

They were still waiting for Moe's shop to reopen, and the grocery store produce section was a bit barren while The Dwarfs took over Anton's farm to sprout and tend new flowers and crops, but it was certainly not the worst calamity to ever strike town... just a rather tragic one as they'd considered Anton, if not a friend, a close acquaintance who'd seemed to be a good person at heart.

"You think you know someone," sighed David as the brittle remains of a rose bush snapped with opening the gate. "I really thought he was part of this community, that he considered humans his friends."

"We should get the Dwarfs over here to replant," Snow decided, not wanting to dwell on Anton's apparent breakdown and attempt to unleash a famine on Storybrooke. "It's less noticeable how depressing this place looks when there's a full garden in bloom. And maybe we can finally convince Emma to paint it. I don't see why she has to keep it gray. It just seems like an additional reminder of the circumstances under which she bought - or stole - the place as the Dark One. I'm still surprised Henry helped pick it out. It really doesn't seem to fit either of them. Picket fences? I don't even like them. And it must have some awful memories for Emma. I just don't understand it..."

Shrugging, David considered, "Maybe she and Hook turned the basement cave into some kind of disgusting Dark One role-play sex dungeon..."

"What's wrong with you? I don't want to imagine that!" Snow huffed.

"Hey, you're the one who convinced me to accept their relationship," David shot back, "with all of its clearly problematic sexual issues because Hook made her happy."

"You said he grew on you."

"Like toenail fungus. I only let him tag along because he's always willing to jump into the fray just to look macho in front of Emma. And if he dies in the process _again_... well... she's already worked out how to go about mourning him and we've still got the gravestone and coffin, and if we're lucky, Zeus will be taking the day off and Hera will smite him to wherever douchebags go after The Underworld."

"David, that's awful!" Snow hissed, though she bit back a slight smile, because Hook, while easy on the eyes, really was a pain in the ass most of the time. She wanted Emma to be happy, really she did, but that didn't mean she wanted her glued to Hook like a barnacle, turning every family gathering into a public make-out session. There was really no way anyone could still be _that_ into a person after _this_ long, which just made it seem like some kind of 'we are better/hotter than you' contest that was frankly becoming insulting.

"What's awful is Emma answering the phone 'Ahoy' and calling him 'The Captain'," David grumbled. "I have no idea how I went so long without that annoying the crap out of me! It's just _weird_."

"Well, I call you 'Charming'. I suppose she wanted a nickname for Killian," Snow shrugged. "She seems big on emulating our story."

"Right, and there's nothing unhealthy about _that_ ," he sighed at which Snow grimaced in agreement.

Frankly, it didn't seem like the couple had a very healthy basis for a relationship, how they met notwithstanding, something Snow had been pondering since having to watch them make-out like horny teenagers for the 10,000th time at Granny's.

In retrospect, since Snow had trusted a complete stranger with no knowledge of modern medical science and a big-ass weird emerald necklace to be her midwife, she had to blame "baby brain" also for setting her previous reservations about Hook aside to encourage Emma's reticent and seemingly pure-sex-distraction-form-everything-else-in-her-life-based interest in the pirate instead of squashing it and getting her to deal with all of the revelations she'd gone through in just a few short months before jumping into a relationship with a man who'd recently tired to kill them all more than once, never mind who was also Henry's step grandfather.

And who had _such awful taste!_

"That's so tacky," Snow complained of the empty rum bottles lined up front porch railing.

"Worse than the miniature _Jolly Roger_ mailbox?"

Before Snow could answer, they both heard the muffled cries of a newborn, and when knocking and ringing the doorbell failed to herald the sound of footsteps, David used their key.

The living room and kitchen were a mess, reminding of Emma's "house" in The Underworld, strewn haphazardly with the baby items and toys that they and others had dropped off prior to the coronation/belated baby shower scheduled for today. Under the layer of toys, Snow lamented, was more nautical themed crap. While she had been no fan of Emma's "Dark Swan" interior decorating, she'd rather take a bland Ikea catalogue interior over this 18th century English naval museum theme that had been expanding outward over the years from Hook's man-cave room where he kept his selection of expensive rums and presumably his porn stash.

Even the rather narcissistic blown-up framed drawing of the pair at the ball in the _Once Upon a Time_ book above the mantle and their wedding photo with Emma in Snow's gown and flowers in her hair were now mostly obscured by crap like ship-shaped salt shakers and a tie rack that had rope tied in nautical knots hanging from it like little nooses.

It was no wonder Henry spent most of his time at Regina's. This place looked nothing at all like the apartment he and Emma had decorated in Manhattan. Snow wasn't sure exactly when Emma had turned Hook's sea-fairing predisposition into an OCD hoarding of all things naval and pirate-related, but seeing it combined with the mess of baby toys somehow made it seem far more disturbing than in the past when she'd shrugged it off as a tacky but harmless hobby.

"I don't think this is Hook's," David pointed out a nearly empty bottle of McClutcheon's Whiskey amongst the open boxes on the coffee table and exchanged an even more worried glance with his wife.

While Emma had a tendency to drink when she was in emotional turmoil - to try to numb and not deal with the emotions - and her continued day-drinking as some sort of flirtation with Hook was something that had never sat well with either of her parents, particularly David whose father was an alcoholic, neither of them would have expected her to get drunk two days after giving birth... even considering the onion-ring-accelerated pregnancy was sure to have thrown her off her game a bit.

"Emma?" Snow called out, but the only answer was their grandson's crying.

Upstairs, the master bedroom was empty and so was Henry's little used room, outdated with a young teenager's posters and other items that that no longer interested the boy who'd just gotten his driver's permit.

While David braved going down into the basement, Snow found the newborn in his crib, red-faced over a soiled diaper and smacking his small lips with hunger.

"Shhhh, it's okay," Snow tried to comfort the infant, but it clearly wasn't. _Very_ clearly wasn't.

The wall paper that she and David had hastily put up while Emma was still recovering in the hospital was scorched all around the rocking chair in the corner. And she found her daughter's ring in the diaper pail.

"No sign of her anywhere," David reported, looking rather pale when they regrouped back in the kitchen.

"Are you okay?" Snow asked, concerned, and he shuddered.

"No. I think I'm going to need therapy. It really is a sex dungeon. There's whips and shackles, bra-less corsets, and _buttless leather chaps_. And trunks of things no father should ever know his daughter uses!"

Before Snow could comment on that horror, David's phone buzzed with a voicemail from the 911 system.

He read the transcript with a mix of dread and releif. "There are 'magical anomalies' reported at the edge of the forest near Old Yale Road."

"Emma..."

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AN: If I mispelled Regina's street or the booze, sorry. I was too lazy to Google them.

Next up: The Playground.


	2. Flower Power

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

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 **CHAPTER TWO**

 **FLOWER POWER**

 **(This chapter has been edited from the original post.)**

Snow and Charming dropped the baby off at Granny's where Hook was more than happy to show off his boy while Snow "took Emma for a manny-peddy before the party."

Back in the truck, David floored it to Yale Road.

The playground that Regina had built to screw with Emma after destroying Henry's castle hadn't been actively used by Stroybrooke's children since the Dark Curse broke. A few of the "Second Curse" and Camelot refugees had squatted there for awhile, but they'd all since either found housing in the town or built homes on the vacant properties surrounding it. Emma had stayed here, briefly, after her magical meltdown, so it wasn't that big of a surprise to find her here, though they hadn't expected her pajamas and bathrobe, curled up in a ball in the genie lamp and sobbing.

"Emma?" Snow tentatively asked.

"Go away!" she cried.

"Emma," David tried, "please tell us what's going on? We just want to help. You left your son alone-"

"Henry's old enough to be left alone," she responded.

Snow exchanged a worried look with Charming. "Emma, he meant the son you just gave birth-"

" _That child is not my son!_ " Emma growled, sitting up enough to glare at them and the metal around her crackled with magic, causing her parents to be thrown back, though thankfully not with enough force to smack into anything injurious.

"I'm sorry," she cried. "I didn't mean to... just leave me... _please_."

"Honey, you're bleeding through your pajamas," Snow pointed out. "Why don't we get you home-"

" _I'm not going back to that prison_!"

"Okay, okay," David tried to calm her down, "we'll go to the Loft then, okay?"

It took a bit more coaxing, but they got Emma stumbling, clearly pretty drunk, into the pickup between them and back to the Loft where Snow helped her into the bathroom to get her cleaned up.

It was sitting on the floor after throwing up Whiskey and bile that Emma broke down into sobs.

"Emma, honey, please tell us what's going on?" Snow pleaded, glancing at David standing stiffly in the doorway.

"That's n-not my ba-baby," she cried. "N-not my hu-husband. Or m-my house. This i-is not my li-life!"

"Emma," David attempted, "I know you never really took the time to... decompress and reconcile all of this fairy tale stuff, and I can understand that this is a bit of shock with the accelerated pregnancy and all, but-"

"I WAS CURSED!" Emma snapped and wiped her red nose with toilet paper.

"Cursed?" both of her parents parroted back, confused.

Shoulder slumped, Emma answered, "You remember when Zelena cursed Hook's lips to take away my magic?"

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They gathered in the kitchen, Emma in a pair of Snow's sweats and t-shirt seated at the table with her mother clutching a cup of hot cocoa.

"I should have known something was up," Snow lamented, "when you stopped drinking hot chocolate with cinnamon."

"And switched to coffee with rum in it?" scoffed Emma.

"Emma, we're so sorry," David sighed, laying a hand on her shoulder.

"Sorry doesn't make anything better," she muttered darkly. "My life is still a mess that I didn't create, that I don't want. I gave birth to a child that I had no part in creating, that I never would have had, with a man I never would have done more than have a one night stand in Vegas with - and even then only while stoned on pixie dust or blackout drunk, the latter which is actually his move - because he's a _misogynist asshole who spent three centuries murdering innocent people and raping women_. Not to mention he's Henry's step grandfather! How were you okay with any of that!?"

"You seemed happy," Snow meekly respond.

"Yeah, well, I wasn't!" Emma cried. "It was like that movie _Being John Malcovich_. Like the tragically ironic ending punishment where John Cussak is stuck in that baby's head. Only I was trapped inside _my own_ head."

Shoulders slumping, Emma amended, "The closest I'd ever come to getting control was when I first turned into the Dark One and in that dreamscape or whatever, when we were on our way to The Underworld, when Neal visited me. But even then _she_ still took over."

"Emma..." David exhaled and leaned against the sink. "We had no idea. You did seem different, but..."

"We barely knew you," Snow defended. "Then when you told us about how you didn't really become a bountyhunter until shortly before Henry found you, that you had warrants out for your arrest... it just... well it seemed like maybe you were pretending a little to be what Henry expected you to be and got carried away with that and didn't want to disappoint anyone, and we didn't want you to feel like you couldn't be yourself and not still be accepted."

Emma grimaced and clutched her cup tighter. "What I did to Cleo was awful. I was selfish, but it had been so long since anyone had cared about me, and so many who said they did turned out to be lying, so I didn't think she would really try to _help_ me. And I didn't... I didn't know how to repay her for that. I _did_ want to be a good person, I just never caught a break after I skipped out on my probation to try and find Neal in Tallahassee. And I guess I got a little addicted to the power of being this badass who hauled in jerks... more than doing it because they were deadbeats and it was the right thing to do. But Henry reminded me of why I really took the job, more than just the deal to get out of going back to jail. I wanted to be a good person and have a legit life, the sort of life that I was planning back before I got arrested."

Pushing back a tangled lock of hair, Emma continued, "It's always felt like there was a darkness stalking me. An... emptiness that compelled me, against my better judgment, to do bad things, to fall in with bad people. Which is why what Lily said scared me so much. She voiced everything I was feeling but hadn't admitted to myself and I didn't want to face that. I didn't want to believe that the Universe had just damned me for no reason, gave me a shitty beginning and made me a bad person so I'd never have a happy ending either."

Sniffling and wiping her nose with a tissue, Emma explained, "I know that's a result of the spell you had cast on me. And I'm sure that's why I was attracted in _any_ way to Hook. Or Walsh who yelled at me fake mistaking me for a deadbeat customer and then apologized by taking me out and getting me drunk. Or hell, I didn't even consider wanting to get in Graham's pants seriously until he drunk assaulted me in public _after_ I found out he was banging Regina. So I was already a mess, and I probably have alcohol addiction issues. Throw in the curse Zelena put on me... and then add those creepy as fuck _flowers_..."

"Flowers?" asked Snow.

"The Middle Mists," Emma explained. "They're _not_ symbols of eternal love. At least not in a _good_ and _honest_ way."

"Wait," David realized, "so Anton was actually trying to help us?"

"Yeah," sighed Emma. "the flowers are why he kept vandalizing Moe French's shop and people's gardens and finally unleashed that blight on all the flowering plants in Storybrooke. He didn't do it as some kind of weird revenge against humans, it was to save us from being turned into emotionally fucked up assholes blind to everything but our own desires that were twisted into the mirroring of other people's desires so it was all just a big clusterfuck that'd end up as screwed up as Camelot."

"It was pretty screwed up," Snow agreed.

"Not that anyone ever seemed to care after tossing that mess aside to go to The Underworld. Arthur was left to, I guess, go on raping Gueneviere and killing his knights who didn't agree with him. Shit you guy should have been taking care of while my stupid-ass cursed self was going to Hell for a misogynist prick," pointed out Emma.

"We were supposed to be taking care of the people of this town and getting justice for those we were wronged by villains, but all this family seems to do is care about itself and pardon the villains we're banging or have to invite to Thanksgiving, and screw everyone else who has to fend for themselves and watch the people who killed their loved ones get praised as heroes for no reason," she amended.

"Maybe now that the flowers are gone," said Emma, "things will go back to how it used to be. I miss being part of a family of heroes instead of just regular old assholes like everybody else in my life."

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AN: Poor Emma. Cured of her CS illness but after popping out a pirate spawn! (Did Zelena give Emma pregnancy-accelerating onion rings, or was it Emma herself?)

Next up: Anton explains.


	3. Operation Annihilate!

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

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 **CHAPTER THREE**  
 **OPERATION ANNIHILATE!  
**

Anton was sitting in a cell in Storybrooke's Asylum. The diminutive giant had been there for the past month since a rather slapdash trial found him insane.

"You knew the Middle Mists were affecting people's behavior," David prompted after being let into Anton's cell.

"I did," Anton confirmed. "That's why I had to institute Operation Annihilate."

"Why didn't you say anything?" asked Snow.

"Would you have believed me while under their effects?" Anton countered, relieved that someone had finally come to their senses. "It was the only way. I had to ensure every last bit of their pollen was destroyed and then I knew it would take time for what was in the air to dissipate and what was in everyone's systems to work its way out."

"Start from the beginning," Snow told him, taking a seat on the other bed, and Anton sighed and nodded.

"Well, it started when I was watching an old _Star Trek_ marathon with the Dwarfs," said Anton, getting a confused look from the couple.

" _Star Trek_?" David repeated.

"Yeah, you know, the _USS Enterprise_? Kirk? Spock? Bones?" Anton pressed, then continued, "It was the episode where they go to Omicron Ceti III which is going to be destroyed by deadly berthold rays and discover that somehow the colonists haven't been irradiated to death and their subspace radio had malfunctioned so that's why they didn't communicate with anyone, which turns out to be a lie."

"Okaaay," Snow interjected. "I don't really follow."

"It's all about flowers," Anton expanded, "flowers with spores that mess with people's emotions and make them susceptible to the whims of other people, the ones responsible for exposing them. And that's totally what happened in Camelot with the Middle Mists!

"Arthur is like the botanist lady who used them to seduce Spock, see," Anton continued, gesticulating with his hands. "He brainwashed Gueneviere into forgetting she loved Lancelot, but more importantly her concerns for the well-being of Camelot and what was happening to her husband. She just became a spacey little hippie fool while his selfish intentions, his desire to covet her and everything, gave him a sort of... autonomy to work in a symbiotic relationship with the spores. He got control of Camelot and a hot wife who didn't actually want him and the flowers got help being cultivated, multiplying in their numbers faster than they could have without human agricultural ingenuity.

"Arthur surrounded the kingdom with them just like Layla surrounded the colony on Omicron Ceti III," said Anton, "which ensured the spores were always infecting people no matter which way the wind blew and would easily infect newcomers besides. Which is what happened to the _Enterprise_ crew just like it did to you guys, including even Emma, the _Dark One_ , who banged Hook in that flower field the way Layla banged Spock, but gender-reversed, since it was Hook who was obsessed with her and projecting his desires into her through the spores. Not that Spock wasn't kind of into Layla in a basic shallow way on his half-Human side, but the rest of his combined Human-Vulcan self wasn't that into her and after he got cured of the spores with Kirk's help he chose his true self over embracing that fake happiness based on physical attraction."

Shaking his head, Anton continued, "Anyway, that episode is when I had the epiphany that the Middle Mists were similar to the Omicron Ceti III flowers. That's why you guys came back a bit off and everyone else started to act differently after the Camelot refugees brought the flowers here.

"I figure that because of how Nimue created them with the Holy Grail, they had to have acquired some sort of sentience that allowed them to infect Humans as hosts, altering their behavior," explained the quasi-giant. "Which was good for the flowers, but not good for Humans since it totally messed up their feelings, their choices, their relationships. Sure, people here seemed happy in their pollen-induced paradise like the people of Camelot did, and like on Omicron Ceti III, but like Kirk said, maybe Humans weren't meant for paradise, maybe they were meant to fight their way through, struggle and scratch for every inch of the way.

"It wasn't right," concluded Anton. "And I'm sorry if waking up to the truth will be hard for some of you, but I couldn't watch you all destroy yourselves for fake happy endings."

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AN: The referenced _Star Trek_ episode, if you haven't guessed, is "This Side of Paradise" and instantly came to mind when I endued the Camelot episode with Hook seducing Emma off to that field with a creepy flower. "Operation Annihilate" (which alludes more to Emma's struggle with Zelena's curse) is another TOS episode involving neural parasites that kill off a research colony, including Kirk's older brother Sam. Resisting the parasites' control was excruciatingly painful, but Sam's wife Aurelan managed to get a brief distress call out to the Enterprise. Only their son, Peter, lived after being ultimately freed of the parasites.

(RIP to another Anton, Anton Viktorovich Yelchin, who played _Pavel Chekov_ in the _Star Trek_ reboot series.)


	4. Oops

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck**

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 **CHAPTER FOUR**

 **OOPS**

"... and then on top of the damned flowers, Zelena cursed Emma," Snow told Regina as they stood in the Mayor's foyer, Regina still holding the lasagna she'd been about to bring to Granny's when the pair barged in spouting about toxic Camelot flowers

"Cursed her? When?" croaked out Regina.

"On her farm, before Emma and Hook got sucked through the time portal," said David. "When her lips touched his and that took away her magic."

"It sounds like Zelena's own personal variation on the Curse of the Empty-Hearted," amended Snow, "making Emma behave like she'd fallen in love with Hook... rather than making someone act like they'd fallen in love with _her_. I read Cora's spellbook after you mentioned the curse. I know it gets around the rule that you can't make someone fall in love by manifesting a dominant duplicate identity altered to fit exactly what the caster desires them to be."

"Whatever the case, the Emma we've been interacting with was a fake manifestation of magic created from her personality," concluded David, "not unlike your 'Evil Queen' doppleganger, only without being created as a separate _physical_ entity and tailor-made to act like Hook's ideal mate."

"Oh, _that_ ," a lilting British accent announced from the stairs. "I completely forgot about that little spell amendment."

"You _forgot_ you cursed our daughter?" Snow snapped.

"That does seem unlikely," agreed Regina, crossing her arms. "You didn't forget that she gave you those onion rings."

Zelena scoffed. "You really think _I_ gave Emma those onions rings? Why would I want to save her from suffering through nine full months of pregnancy? Obviously, she took them herself to get that little pirate parasite out as soon as possible. Personally, I would have just aborted the thing myself."

"So you _did_ curse our daughter to fall in love with Hook?" David growled.

"Technically, _Hook_ cursed her with his kiss _that she knew was cursed_ even if she didn't know all the additional spells I tacked on the end," shrugged Zelena. "It's hardly my fault that you lot are as bad as this country's Congress. If you'd bothered to do a little magical testing on his cursed smoocher, you'd have found it. I wasn't exactly trying to hide it. So, really, all of _you_ are at fault for sending Emma off with the useless, one-handed idiot who could be her and your family's undoing as her backup _in a magic fight._ I swear, it has to be more than just flower pollen making you all stupid. Lately, I've begun to wonder why I'd want to be all goody-goody like you lot when it's incredibly boring, even for the sake of my own child."

"It's because," Snow stated coolly when Zelena reached the foyer, "you've been stoned on Camelot flower spores that made you act like a good person, you evil cunt!"

To everyone's surprise, she punched Zelena in the face, breaking her nose.

"You little bitch!" Zelena shrieked and threw a bolt of magic at Snow, tossing her into Regina's mirror and scattering her bowl of apples.

"Zelena, stop it!" Regina demanded, conjuring a ball of fire as her sister prepared to launch another magical attack.

It wasn't Regina's threat that stopped her, though, and the odd expression that suddenly crossed the redhead's face was from the sensation of someone reaching through her back and yanking out her heart.

"You cursed me," Emma growled as she moved to stand facing the former Wicked Witch.

Zelena choked out, "You cursed yourself. And to be fair, you seemed enamored of that dirty pirate."

"You're a vile villain," Emma seethed, squeezing the heart, "who conned her way into this family."

"Please... I have a daughter."

"Because you raped a man. Did you know that's how you were conceived? Your mother was _raped_. You're a product of rape who became a rapist. And you think you deserve a happy ending with your child because you remembered one long-ago sleepover with the sister your mother could have loved with a heart, the daughter who was nothing more than a political bargaining chip, but at least she wasn't a reminder of the worst experience of her life? You're demented, Zelena," Emma spat at her, "if you really think there is _any_ hope for you in this story."

Emma squeezed tighter and Snow tried to stop her, pleading, "Emma, this won't bring back anything you've lost because of her."

"Or _anyone_ ," Emma stated and glared at Zelena, asking "Do you know why Neal died?"

"Because he was foolish enough to believe a talking candle?" countered Zelena impetuously, apparently too foolish even with her heart in another's hand not to make a snide remark.

But then, heroes weren't supposed to seek revenge.

"No, he died so I could defeat you. Better late than never," Emma corrected and squeezed until Zelena's black-centered heart shattered to dust and she slumped over dead. " _Oops_."

"Emma," Snow exhaled.

"She deserved it," Emma insisted.

"Maybe she did," Regina conceded, "but you didn't deserve to be the one to do it."

"Yes I did. For Neal. For Henry. I did," she stated.

"Emma," sighed Snow, "she has... had a daughter."

"She _raped_ a man to have his baby _to spite her sister_ ," Emma countered. "She _killed_ my son's father and kept _his_ father in a cage for a year to erase us all from existence so she could grow up as Cora's beloved daughter. _Cora_. Who the hell aspires to _that_?"

"She has a point," David sighed.

Regina sighed as well, looking between the lifeless body of her half-sister and the pale, bedraggled birth mother of her son who looked like hot buttered ass, quite frankly.

"I should declare some sort of revenge on you for killing my sister," uttered Regina, "but honestly, she was batshit crazy. I've done a lot of things I regret, but at least I named my son after my father because I regretted killing him. She named her daughter after her rape victim to honor him, completely oblivious that Robin died trying to keep his child away from that lunatic. I don't know why anyone let her keep the child or why I've been so... happy to have her a sister just because my mother revealed we had a sleep over one night..."

"It's the Middle Mist flowers," sighed Snow. "That's what we were trying to explain. They're apparently worse than pixie dust. They've been messing with all of our emotions, and reinforcing Zelena's curse on Emma whenever it weakened, I suppose from the true love influence of her family. It seems every time she got close to breaking free of it, Hook would bring her a bouquet of the horrid things, keeping her trapped by Zelena's spell with his attempt to be... romantic."

Only then did they notice Emma had vanished and exchanged a concerned look.

David reasoned, "Shit. We'd better get to Granny's."

* * *

AN: Ding dong, the green bitch is dead! I love writing Zelena, but she had to go.

Next up: Emma and Hook face off.


	5. Unhooked

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck**

* * *

 **CHAPTER FIVE**

 **UNHOOKED**

"Emma, luv!" Hook crowed when the blonde appeared in a puff of purple smoke, then his brows furrowed as even tipsy she looked off and... "Thought you were gonna dress up for this, baby?"

"Don't call me 'baby'," Emma growled, "you disgusting bastard!"

As she lashed out, Regina appeared with Snow and David who slapped a certain cuff on Emma's wrist so that her hand simply smacked uselessly against Hook's chest.

"Sorry," Regina apologized, "but you're not behaving rationally, and we don't know he had any malicious intent."

"What the hell is going on here?" Hook demanded.

"I'm breaking up with you is what!" Emma snapped.

"Swan, what-"

"Calling me by my last name is _not_ sexy or romantic," Emma cut him off, undeterred by being magically spayed. "Just because people do it on television shows doesn't make it cute. And for every 'Netflix and chill' since getting back from that farce of a time travel adventure, I want to throw up and take a shower from the inside out!"

"Okay, if this is because I didn't clean out the car... or the living room, lu-"

Hook tried to take her arm and so Emma punched him. _Hard_. Hook stumbled back and she hit him again, causing him to tripped over some presents and land on his back, smacking his head against the floor. As Hook groaned, disoriented, still half drunk, Emma pounced and hit him again. And again.

While everyone stood there in shock, not sure what to do.

After the fifth punch, Hook finally regained his wits enough to fight back, shoving Emma off and reversing their positions with his sword at her throat. Why he walked around with a sword, well, those not fond of him made certain jokes about the size of his "little captain". Or maybe it was just meant to distract from the not-quite-realistic looking results of using some magical hair tonic to counteract his balding.

"You've got me on my back," Emma hissed. "Going to rape me now? I know it's such an enjoyable activity for you! All those little reenactments in that sick dungeon. Battle conquest _rape_. Drunk barmaid _rape_. Dark One threatening to murder my entire family _rape_!"

"I didn't _rape_ you! It was just a game!" Hook exclaimed, standing up. "You're the one who suggested it! What the hell is wrong with you, woman? Have you lost your mind!?"

"No, I finally got it back! I was _cursed_ into doing whatever the fuck you desired, you asshole!" Emma shouted as she stood as well.

Everyone in the diner exchanged shocked looks while Hook was most befuddled, taking a long moment to process before uttering, "You were... what?"

"Cursed by Zelene when I pulled your dumb ass out of that water trough, you misogynist bastard!" Emma hissed. "Like I needed a one-handed, magic-less prick who was my only potential undoing _as my backup_! The only reason you listened to my father's dumbshit idea that threatened to _destroy our entire family_ out of some stupid notion of chivalry was because you wanted to look heroic to get in my pants!

"Well, congratulations, you did! But my heart wasn't remotely involved in the equation!"

"You... don't love me?" Hook asked, bewildered at the notion.

"Duh!" Emma snapped. "Why would I _ever_ want to be with someone who helped Cora murder hundreds of people, who left me for dead, who stalked me, who emotionally manipulated me, and who slept with my son's grandmother and then went out of his way to try and fuck me just to screw over his own stepson _again_?

"You handed Baelfire over to a child-soldier-recruiting demon whose right hand freak was a fucking child molester," Emma spat, " _which you knew_ , and you think if I was actually in my right mind I would want to be with someone who handed any child, let alone my son's father, over to a rapist and a psycho who made little kids fight and maim each other for sport _out of spite_ because he didn't want to hang with you?"

"I... well..." Hook rubbed the back of his neck. "I had to protect my crew..."

"Killing him would have been kinder!" Emma railed. "You wanted him to suffer, to regret that he'd refused your 'kindness' offered up on a plate of lies!"

"Dude," Leroy interjected, "you handed Henry's dad to a pedophile? What's _wrong_ with you, man?"

"I did suggest we kill him," Smee interjected from the group of ex-pirates. "I told him it'd be kinder after what that freak did to our cabin boy. Poor kid threw himself to the mermaids when he couldn't take the nightmares anymore."

" _Shut up, Smee_!" Hook hissed at him.

"You're not my captain anymore," Smee shot back, "and I know you steal from my lobster traps. I only came here for the free grub and booze. And I was only a part of your crew because you made me your indentured servant and made sure I was beholding to your contract with Pan, which is fucking sick considering what your father did to you and your brother, and for what? I didn't even do anything against you! I _brought you a magic bean_ and you still fucked me over just because you wanted your own court jester! Fuck you, _mate_!" he concluded, getting up and stomping out.

Hook swallowed uncomfortably and Emma continued to glare, crossing her arms as she picked up where she'd left off.

"You actually think, on top of being totally cool with that, my response to just _finding out you also fucked Neal's mother would be 'huh'_ and that I'd want to split my heart to save your disgusting ass?" Emma continued. "And _then_ sacrifice every bit of personality, integrity, morality, and _independence_ I had when we met to be your asshole fuck bunny who went running into your arms for protection if a mouse farted?

"You think because you didn't give much of a shit about Baelfire and had no problem murdering your father and orphaning your half brother that it's perfectly normal for a mother to drag her son to the fucking Underworld and then abandon him there to pal around with a serial killer who wanted to murder him so I could pine over a scumbag I just started dating a month before and suddenly couldn't live without?

"IT'S NOT NORMAL!" Emma shouted at everyone in the room and threw a particular glare at Archie, "And fuck you and your fake-ass cure-acquired degree in psychology for the completely useless job you did helping me work through any qualms I had about being in an emotionally abusive relationship with a murderer and a rapist who tried to kill me and my family and treated me like a fucking prize for saying I _wanted_ to be completely ignorant of anything bad he ever did! Regina was right! You're an AWFUL shrink! Why don't you work on your own shit for turning your patricide-gone-wrong into turning into an insect and adopting the kid you orphaned because you were too chicken-shit to run away from home until you were a forty-year-old virgin so Geppetto grew up to an introverted weirdo who couldn't form any intimate human connections and turned his PTSD from finding his puppet-ized parents into cutting down a fucking magical tree to make himself a fake-son out of wood, and he didn't even cut down the _good_ magical tree, he cut down the bad one that made a greedy, horny, lazy, doucbebag who ruined my life!"

Archie looked torn between shock and bursting into tears while Geppetto looked confused, clearly having not been let in on all the details of his own story, and August looked slightly guilty for having never said anything to his father.

"Emma-" August began.

"Oh, go stick your dick in a wood chipper!" Emma spat the puppet. "You're almost as bad, thinking I'd actually consider _you_ my best friend after you convinced my true love to leave me, called the cops on me, stole all of my money, and were apparently were off having a sex vacation while Peter Pan was trying to steal my son! If my hands weren't already soar, I'd break your nose right off, Pinocchio!"

August shrunk back while Emma turned her wrath back on the pirate.

To Hook she accused, "I didn't make you a better person! And it's fucking selfish to demand someone be the reason you don't do evil shit! And disgusting and delusional to tell them you're glad they're heartbroken so you can swoop in and become their world because you believe they're your destined one true love! Especially after all of that previous shit involving you destroying my first true love's family, like somehow recreating where you fucked up with me as Milah and Henry as Baelfire doesn't make it fucking disgusting that you get to even _think_ you deserve _his_ happy ending!"

Emma was spitting as she spoke and advancing further on the pirate until he was backed against the counter.

"And don't give me some shit about time travel me giving you unconscious desires either," hissed Emma, "because I know you lied that you didn't remember me _and_ that wasn't even me! I would have thrown you to the fucking sharks after you admitted to being a date rapist which you _only_ did because you didn't want your past self to get first dibs on getting me drunk and fucking me like you tried to do on our first date! I mean, what if he traumatized me into seeing the monster you really are!?

"And speaking of sharks," she continued, "I also know you left Eric to die and then pretended you'd reunited him with Ariel so I'd swoon over how you'd changed and go out with you when you goddamn knew Zelena had impersonated Ariel who had to save the actual less of scumbag pirate to keep her true love from starving to death, _you sick, twisted fuck_! So take your goddamn ship that you traded for my pussy and shove it up your ass!"

"I didn't know that witch cursed you," Hook croaked out. "She'll pay for her crimes, Swan. She-"

"..s dead like she should have been for good when Gold stabbed her if someone," she glared at Regina, "hadn't keep all her fucking magical trophies like she learned jackshit after Pan stealing the Dark Curse!

"At the very least, if _I_ had been the Dark One," Emma stated coldly, "I'd have given Zelena those onion rings so I could cut her rape spawn out myself and watch her bleed to death. I wouldn't have done it to put any Dark One energy a baby since I wouldn't have bothered saving your useless ass by turning you into one. I would have cheered at your fake heroic death and left you to rot with your mass-murderer brother in The Underworld," Emma stated coldly. "And you should know, that even if I was your cursed little fuck puppet, the _only_ reason I didn't let you go hit the pavement after your 'romantic' suicide attempt was the self-preservation of the Dark One curse over-powering Zelena's little experiment and not wanting you to know what you were and give me any competition. If you _hadn't_ been the Dark One, I'd have let you go _splat_. _"_

"I'm sorely tempted to cut off something of yours, and I don't mean your hand again. The memory of you being inside my body will revolt me until the day I die and the only consolation I have is that I broke free in time to spare myself having to incubate your spawn for nine months on top of being your walking, talking sex doll. I will _never_ be free of how you violated me, whether your meant it or not."

Hook had nothing to say to that while everyone else just looked uncomfortable.

"We're done," said Emma. "Pretty sure being cursed is grounds for annulment. You can find your brother's mass murder ring with your son's dirty diapers."

"He's our son," Hook argued.

"He's _your_ son," Emma corrected brokenly. "I was nothing but an unwilling egg donor and an incubator who will have to live with all the ways in which I was violated by our 'true love'. At least you got something good out of it. All I'll have are nightmares of you being inside me and regrets for all the people I could have saved but didn't even care about, all the time I've lost with my real family, _with my son_ , while that psycho green hoe bag made me into your sex doll.

"You're a horrible, selfish, narcissistic, sex-addicted drunk, Hook," she told him, "who thought having a slut you conned into loving you would automatically make you a hero. It just makes you an even bigger asshole. Try to do better for your kid. You know, like I was trying to do until I got cursed and turned back into a selfish cunt."

She pushed past them all, heading toward the back of the diner and the Inn.

Swallowing hard, Hook managed to ask, "So... Zelena...?"

"Emma crushed her heart," Snow confirmed, still troubled even though she'd basically done the same to Cora and both women did deserve to die for what they did to this family.

"I really didn't know she was cursed," Hook defended. "When Zelena said that everything that makes her special, that makes her powerful, that makes her a threat when she kissed me would be gone, I thought she just meant magic."

"Which was returned the moment the time spell was cast," Regina recalled, shaking her head, "so obviously she meant more than that, but assumed you wouldn't realize it, because that's the sort of thing Zelena would find hilarious. Given her impersonation of Marian and going off with Robin to New York, she obviously was a big fan of long cons and enjoying the spoils whether anyone realized they were being duped or not, perhaps even more-so because they didn't."

"Your sister was a crazy bitch," the pirate told her.

"And you're a rapist who gave the woman you professed to love because of a time travel paradox a ring set with part of a jewel your brother got through mass murder," Regina countered. "You don't exactly have any high moral ground to stand on."

"And you do?" scoffed Hook.

"My lover is dead," the former Evil Queen reminded, "and not a day goes by that I don't feel unworthy of him and wonder what could possibly have caused him to overlook all of my terrible crimes."

Shaking her head, she continued, "You, on the other hand, didn't question. You _pushed_ for her. The foundation of your epic romance was a farce and maybe you got stoned on those flowers too, but the way you pursued Emma before then and given your past history with women, as far as I'm concerned, labels you a sexual predator who was just all too happy that the victim of his fixation inexplicably began to enjoy being manhandled, degraded, and her personal space invaded. All of that should have been a clue something was wrong with Emma before you started sniffing Middle Mist spores."

Regina gave Snow and Charming a sour look, amending, "Seems I was the only one who thought anything amiss. I guess it helps to have lost my true love and then had some fool try to shove me in the direction of a new one. People who are grieving that kind of loss don't just jump into the arms of a hot stranger after the funeral.

"But no one listened to me, did they? You all jumped on the epic true love train because of that stupid book writing them a pretty story - even though it was a pretty story written by a liar and a psychopath who ensured my attempts to escape my mother failed, who caused you to curse your own child before her birth, who then tried to imprison us all in his fanfiction."

"Yes, well," Snow countered, "if it wasn't for that guilt and those flowers, perhaps we wouldn't have welcomed you into this family with open arms, Regina. Maybe it was being stoned on flower spores that made us give you a chance. Now you have to prove that it wasn't just being drugged with happy dust that suppressed your dark side."

"The same goes for you," David directed at Hook who glared at them.

"Who says I want to? Turns out the only reason I put in the effort was a lie."

"Do it for your son," Snow stated, nodding to the baby in his carrier.

"Yeah, that turned out so well for you and _your_ children, didn't it?" Hook scoffed, taking the handle. "Doesn't feel much like a party anymore. Sorry to have inserted myself into your family so inconveniently."

The pirate left with his son in a huff and Granny remarked, "Please tell me it was those flowers that sent my granddaughter off sniffing the butt of a stranger."

Instead of addressing that question, Regina asked, "Where is Henry?"

* * *

AN: A punch for every season we've endured Captain Rapist!

Next up: Final chapter


	6. Always

**Note: GUEST reviewers, please have the courtesy to at least make up a name, will you? Just using "Guest" is lazy as fuck.**

 **Note to "Guest": Thank you very much for the kind SQ review, but SEE ABOVE!**

 **Note to Mir: I am sad this one ends so abruptly, but it was a fully formed story idea that I didn't want to extend, making it up as I went along as I am, to some degree, doing with "Carnivhell" to get to the final chapters. I'm sure it will disappoint many in its lack of happy resolution, but that's how this cookie crumbled. Thanks for reading!  
**

* * *

 **CHAPTER SIX**

 **ALWAYS**

Outside the old pumper truck blared down Main Street as Emma stood at the window of Room 8, looking out at the clock tower, remembering when she first came here, remembering when she was filled with fear - but also hope.

It felt like that hope had died long ago.

It felt like she had lost more than she had gained.

And each ticking of the hand forward was a reminder of the time wasted trapped in her own mind, of watching a curse hijack her emotions, infiltrate her family, offer her body up as a prize to an unworthy victor who created that illusion on the whims of a mad woman.

She had nearly been driven mad.

Or maybe she actually was.

Emma looked down at her cupped hands, at her heart, once pure, now tarnished with blotches of black.

* * *

Henry sat on the bench where his old castle used to stand looking out at the sea and wiped at his eyes as Violet walked away.

He should have seen it coming really, the _"You're sweet and all, Henry, but you're really not my type"_ speech.

He knew that translated to mean too nerdy, not good enough looking, and the bastard son of an impoverished ex-criminal dead man with no inheritance or any kind of heroic legacy since even his death was essentially for nothing what with Zelena's escape and history still being altered, apparently to completely fuck up his grandparent's meet-cute. How that might have altered other things in the past, including the spell Emma's parents had cast on her before her birth that she didn't find out about until _after_ the past was changed... well, it sounded like Emma and Hook killed a lot of butterflies and the effects were still being felt.

Things were supposed to be different.

Henry tried to be a good son, but it felt like he kept failing. He could never decide if magic was good or evil, if people were good or evil, or what his place in all of this was.

It hurt that Emma could have teamed up with Rumplestiltskin to find a way to make sure his dad didn't die, that she didn't try to save him in the past.

It made him angry that they didn't find The Underworld until after his dad had moved on, just like every other loophole they discovered about something came too late for someone he cared about.

He'd watched his adoptive mother lose her soulmate and his birth mother turn into a piece of pirate jewelry, and he had to say it was okay and be supportive, because he had the "Heart of the Truest Believer" whatever the fuck that was.

Or because he had a stupid quill that wasn't really a super power but rather a burden to record the events of a people essentially in exile while whatever life he might have otherwise had was starting to pass him by.

Almost sixteen. He should be starting to think about college, about the career he wanted, his hopes and dreams and aspirations, but all he had was that damned book he'd once buried here to protect it and now wished it had been washed out to sea.

Feeling as helpless as the day his castle was demolished when he was ten, Henry pulled his coat tighter against the chilling sea breeze and wondered not for the first time if he ever should have gone to find his birth mother.

"Henry?"

The voice of his grandfather made him turn and Prince Charming took a seat beside him.

"Violet dumped me," Henry told him before he could ask what was wrong. "She said she really wasn't ever that into me, that she just wanted to tick off her dad 'cause I'm not the classic hero type he thinks she should be with... that I guess she does want to be with after all, after the novelty of dating someone from another world wore off."

"I'm sorry, Henry," sighed David, laying a hand on his shoulder. "If Violet can't see what an amazing young man you are, then she's an idiot. You deserve someone who doesn't need a prince or a dragon slayer. I got lucky that way. I'm sure you will too."

"Yeah," shrugged Henry, unconvinced. "It didn't work out so well for my parents, though, did it? The princess and the pauper. He died and she couldn't wait to get with my douchey but dashing step- _grand_ dad. Regular guys don't get the girls in fairy tales, not even the guys who write them," he lamented of the book in his lap that now recounted his getting dumped, complete with a picture to immortalize it forever.

"Maybe they would," David began, "if someone hadn't cheated and changed the rules..."

* * *

Storybrooke's cemetery was a lonely place visited by few. Most of the dead had been brought over from The Enchanted Forest, trophies of The Evil Queen or reminders for her prisoners of what they had taken from them. The rest had died here, victims of various calamities, most of them tied to the extended family of Regina Mills and Snow White.

"I suppose it's a relief to know my hypocrisy regarding my sister and her spawn was caused by magical hay fever," Regina remarked after setting the urn of her sister's ashes in her family crypt. There would be no funeral for Zelena, no grave marker, just the jar to show her niece one day if the girl ever asked. Honestly, it was more than her sister would have done for any of them.

"But not much of a consolation," Snow sighed, looking over at the sun beginning to set over the mountains. "We failed Emma. We thought we were supporting her opening her heart to true love, and we were helping to imprison her in an insidious spell."

"We were all under a spell," Regina reminded as her shoes crunched the remains of Middle Mists that had once grown here like weeds.

"A spell we brought on ourselves by running off to Camelot without any planning, without knowing what we were walking into. We were so desperate to save Emma that we made things worse. She was freed of the Dark One curse, but entrenched even deeper in the Curse of the Empty-Hearted."

"We've all spent periods of our lives as prisoners," Regina sighed.

"I suppose that is true," Snow agreed while noting the dead snow bells at Johanna's grave, making a note to replant them as soon as she could while pushing down guilt that she hadn't sought her old maid out in The Underworld, had no idea if she had been able to move on or was still trapped there. They had all become so selfish, so focused on only those ensnared with them.

The Middle Mists might have influenced the whole town, but it seemed that their exposure together in Camelot, perhaps with the different magic of The Enchanted Forest, had pulled them even further inward as a family, further away from the people they had once pledged themselves to serve, even to the point of clinging to those they should have been punishing for terrible crimes.

"Where do we go from here?" she wondered as they passed the 'grave' that still held Hook's empty coffin, though the ornate headstone had been magically blanked of his name. "How do we get our daughter back?"

"We go on as we always have," answered Regina at Robin's headstone. "And she has to find her own way."

Not far away was Neal's plot, only visited by Henry who brought roses, their dead husks now laying in a sad pile that spoke to a lonely young man.

Regina had spied him once sitting here, talking to his father. It had finally struck her then how unfair it was. She'd feared Neal Cassidy as another usurper of her son's love, but she'd come to realize with the moving on her own father that love didn't work that way, and how tragic it was that, in a sense, she and her father had been like the reverse her whole life, her father talking, desperate to reconnect with her, while she wasn't really there.

She could call herself the Evil Queen or Regina Mills. It didn't matter. _She_ had killed them all, so many people, destroyed their lives, their families, and ultimately it was her own family that had suffered in the end, all of the happy endings, including her own - destroyed.

* * *

Captain Killian Jones left Storybrooke, stone-faced, watching through his spyglass from the deck of the _Jolly Roger_ as the gray Victorian burned, the final destruction of the lie he'd so desperately wanted to be true.

"The cannons are loaded, Captain," his new first mate told him.

The pirate formerly known as Captain Hook glanced down at his left arm, at the hook once more in place of his hand thanks to the Crocodile cornering him outside of Granny's to renege on a contract that held no basis if the woman who signed it wasn't really Emma Swan.

The woman he'd loved.

The woman he now hated.

Because she was a lie.

"Make sail," Hook ordered. "Take us beyond the breakwater before firing."

"Aye, Captain."

Tucking the spyglass back into the coat he hadn't worn in years, Hook mused that it felt like slipping back into his skin after putting on all manner of costumes for love, to fit in with people who would never accept him, whom he knew laughed behind his back that he had been neutered for a woman.

Never again.

In his quarters Hook looked down upon his son, the only good thing to come from his infatuation with "The Savior".

"It's just you and me, Lad," he told the boy who blinked up at him with his own crystal blue eyes and reached out to tug at Liam's ring once more suspended from a chain about his neck.

Back up on at the helm minutes later, Hook looked once more in the direction of the setting sun, at the smoke rising from the life he should have known was never for him, landlocked, _domestic_.

It was the happiest he had ever been in his life, but it was a lie that forced him to be someone he wasn't, and in all honesty never had been even when he wore the uniform of a naval officer.

He was a pirate.

He was a villain.

And for the first time in 300 years he was going to embrace that, free of the blinding folly of love.

"FIRE!" Hook bellowed and the canons unleashed their purchase, raining pennies into the sea.

"Where are we headed, Captain?" his first mate asked.

"Far _far_ away from here," Hook answered, compass clutched in his remaining hand as a glowing blue portal opened up.

* * *

Henry picked the lock on Room 8.

Granny had never cleared out and re-rented the room, even with the influx of people from the Second Curse, Camelot, and Land of Untold Stories, probably because her wolf senses had informed her that Henry sometimes broke in just to feel close to his dad, surrounded by the few things Neal had brought with him from New York.

It took some jiggling, but once he was inside, Henry found Emma laying on the bed clutching one of his dad's scarfs, the thick purple-y blue one he'd seem to like best when he was here in Storybrooke.

Or she thought Mr. Gold would turn her into a snail.

"Mom?"

Emma sniffled and wiped her eyes and nose, embarrassed, as she sat up to find her son standing on the threshold. The past few days had been like coming back down to sea level after being at the top of Mt. Everest, finally able to breath again without feeling like each breath was fighting against death, drowning. There had been days, spans of weeks even, when she'd been sure she was going to go insane, when she had wanted to just give up and let herself fade away and the spell take over completely.

Then finally the flowers had died and she'd been able to get free... but not before finding herself pregnant. It seemed like the universe was out of new material.

"Hey," Emma sniffed.

"I brought you some grilled cheese. And your box from the station," Henry told her, grabbing the file box from the hallway and shutting the door. "I thought maybe you'd want it."

He set it on the bed and Emma lifted the cover. Neal's dreamcatcher was on top, and she almost broke down again at the site of it. What she said earlier to her parents wasn't entirely true.

She could _almost_ break through when she held it. Like the keychain she pulled next from her cigar box, both were enough to at least act like a conscience, have some influence on that impostor's actions. But after she became the Dark One, after the necklace was vanished away and tucked into her box and the dreamcatcher turned into inspiration to hurt Henry, whatever facsimile of guilt, regret, and shame that Emma had worked against her getting anywhere near her box of keepsakes. Being consumed by that darkness gave her a moment of clarity... and then shoved her down even deeper, like she was shouting from the bottom of a well.

"I'm sorry I hurt you, Kid," Emma managed.

"It wasn't you," shrugged Henry. "Grandpa said you were under a spell."

"I got myself into that situation, though," she sighed, shaking her head. "I let my fear of giving your dad another chance, of it failing or something bad happening again, keep me from trying, and it turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophesy. I lost him again. And I didn't even try true love's kiss, because I was afraid it wouldn't work and what if he died knowing I didn't love him as much as he loved me? But him dying knowing I didn't even try is even worse," she cried.

"And I knew I screwed up," she sniffed through her tears, "but then I couldn't even fix it, because then I was cursed and that spell didn't care about you having your dad, just wanted clear sailing to be with the pirate, since that's what that Curse Emma was created for."

Emma looked sadly at the Polaroid of her and Neal and remembered, "I promised I would do better with you than the shit we had to deal with growing up, than what we did to each other. I promised your dad I'd find happiness for us. And I failed at all of those."

Shutting the box, Emma lamented, "The worst part is, your dad died a stupid death because no one had his back, because his family abandoned him _again_ , and then the woman who killed him got to go right on hurting more people and then forgiven without even being sorry just because she tricked her way into this family. Other people got to cheat death who didn't deserve it, but everyone just shrugged all the injustices off and focused on the next crisis, and I don't even know how much can really be blamed on those stupid flowers."

Grimacing, Henry considered, "Well, Isaac did mess up people's stories. And I think Merlin's apprentice was pretty shady, so everything kinda just went downhill fast. I mean, we only had a month to really try to get back to normal, whatever that even is, before Grandpa Gold showed up and the whole Dark One stuff happened, and then we were all suffering from magical hay-fever..."

"That's true," agreed Emma with a rueful smile. "We never do catch a break, do we? That was one good thing about New York, even if our memories weren't real. A whole year without some magical crisis. Is it bad that a part of me regrets that choice to come back here?"

"Naw," shrugged Henry. "I mean, I ran away to New York to try and destroy magic, remember?"

"Sadly," Emma snorted. "If I'd been me, I'd have dragged you off that statue before you made a complete and utter fool of yourself with that lame speech, Kid," she teased and Henry made a face.

"Ugh, don't remind me! It's immortalized on the Internet. And I was high on magic pollen, so of course I was acting like a doofus and it doesn't count as reflecting my elocution," Henry defended.

" _Elocution_?" said Emma, "What is this? _My Fair Lady_?"

Rolling his eyes, Henry responded, "To much time hanging out with a girl who speaks like a Shakespeare play."

"You mean you actually _talked_?"

"Unlike _some_ people," Henry huffed, then regretted it at his mother's hurt look. He didn't want to imagine the sick kinky shit that his mother had been basically forced against her will to participate in with that pirate. "Sorry. It's not like Violet was telling the truth anyway. She dumped me, actually."

Emma gave her son a sympathetic look. "Oh, Kid, I'm sorry. You really seemed to like her."

Shrugging, Henry replied, "Yeah, 'seemed to'. I probably just sniffed some flower in one of Arthur's bazzilion arrangements and everyone in Camelot was already stoned on the stuff, so why not? She got to be rebellious and I wanted to play the hero. I was just a novelty and she was my damsel in distress, and both are stupid things to want someone to be."

"I'm still sorry," Emma told Henry. "First loves don't always go well - probably most don't - but I wanted it to at least be honest for you. Guess we have that in common."

At his confused look, she admitted, "Lily was my first crush. Only girl I've ever felt like that about, which confused me for the longest time, until I found out it wasn't really romantic at all, just the whole magical balance thing. We got pieces of each other that we weren't supposed to have. I interpreted that as love and I guess she saw it as jealousy or hate or something. So, looks like we both started out getting our hearts broken by mean girls over magical bullshit."

"I guess so," agreed Henry. "It's the mean stuff she said that hurts more than breaking up or realizing it wasn't real, though. I thought she was a nice person who she thought I was cool, even if it was geeky cool, but she just thinks I'm a geek and that the whole Author thing is dumb. And I guess I can't even blame her for the last part, cause I write and illustrated a freak'n book in my sleep! It's a pretty shitty destiny, and I kinda regret that I picked up that quill, even if it saved us from Isaac's book. Instead of having my own story, my fate is to just record other people's? It sounded cool at thirteen when I just wanted to avoid school and have magical adventures... and was stoned on flower spores, but... now it kind of sucks."

"Yeah, destiny is a bitch, Kid," Emma told him, giving his arm a squeeze. "This whole 'Savior' thing hasn't exactly turned out great as far as my story's concerned. _But_ , don't let that mean girl get you down, make you think you have to fight dragons or save bimbos in fancy ballgowns to matter or be a hero. Embrace your geekiness, Henry. There's nothing wrong with that. I was totally a geek until I put on that bounty hunter costume and tried to reinvent myself to be cool, you know."

That surprised him, and Henry asked, "Yeah?"

"Oh, totally. Nerd glasses and everything, progressively nerdy even the older I got," Emma groaned. "And I was stuck in a late nineties fashion rut for like ten years, which I don't really regret abandoning, though it probably wasn't all that honest to just try out impersonating everything about someone else to see if that made people think I was a badass until I was basically living a lie that I only kept up because I wanted you to think I was cool. And, you know, not a criminal up until only recently before you found me. I'm sure I would have been a _way_ less cool mom than in Regina's fake memories, so... I guess you have her to thank for not believing you were raised by a loser geek who never even bothered to get her GED... which isn't very geeky, actually, so I guess I was kind of just pretending to be a geek and was more of just a loser..."

"I'm sure you were never a loser, Mom," Henry tried to reassure her.

Emma shook her head. "I wasn't that good of a person, Henry. I never tried to make anything of myself until I got the opportunity to work for that bailbonds company. Maybe it was magic holding me back. Maybe it's that I felt like if I did, that would mean I could have kept you and then I would have hated myself more, so it was just easier to believe I was worthless and would never amount to anything, which meant you were better off with anyone else. Or maybe it was being attracted to criminality, to other people's darkness, because I don't have my own," she shrugged. "But then Cleo was looking for the kid she gave up, and it felt like a sign to stop not trying - and maybe a part of me, deep down, wanted to look for you, but I wanted to be someone you'd respect, that you'd be proud to have as your mom... and I'm sorry that I'm not."

"That's not true," insisted Henry. "I am proud to have you as my mom. You didn't have to come with me to Storybrooke, but you did, even though you were afraid. You helped a lot of people here and you broke the Curse-"

"After which I stopped helping the people who needed help and got sucked into the ass-backward morality of this family that seems to only really care about itself because I was so desperate to belong somewhere, to have the family I always wanted," Emma lamented. "I was a coward, Kid, and I was dishonest. Even with that spell the Apprentice did on me before I was born that probably messed with the usual aversion to evil people that every non-psycho has, every stupid, bad, selfish choice I made that led me to get cursed by Zelena was mine. I still knew when things were wrong, when I was doing them out of fear or embarrassment at not being good enough or whatever people wanted me to be or disappointing them.

"I told Ashley that everyone's going to tell you who you are and you have to push back, you have to be yourself, and I wasn't even being myself when I told her that." Emma sighed. "I just... I wanted to, though, and I chickened out. You were so obsessed with the 'Savior' thing and all these idealistic reasons that I'd given you up, instead of the truth that I was just a stupid, scared kid with a broken heart that got abandoned by everyone I counted on and didn't know how to be a functional member of society let alone a mom.

"I did want you to have your best chance, but that doesn't make me a hero, Kid, or a good mom," Emma insisted. "It just makes me someone with shitty self-esteem, who talks a big game about standing up for yourself, but who's gone through life letting people take advantage of me. It might take a blow up doll version of me to think _Hook_ deserved better than me, but regular non-rapist-murderers? Good guys like your dad could have done a lot better than me. Neal shouldn't have had to lose his life because I was too big of coward to even try to save him. He said he would always fight for me, he still did even after he died, but I never fought for him, and I know how shitty it feels to think someone didn't care enough, and the worst part is that it's when he got August to leave me and I got sent to prison, so I'm pretty sure after the things I said in Neverland, and never making it to have that cup of coffee, that your dad died thinking I'd never forgiven him, that some... spiteful part of me would rather let him die for real. I'm sure all the crap about Hook on the way to The Underworld just confirmed for him that I was a total bitch who'd still have picked Hook to share my heart with over him. Thanks to that curse, I wasn't even able to tell your dad how sorry I was, that I regretted not trying and I _tried_ to break through, I really did, but the magic was just too strong and there wasn't enough time..."

Losing a battle against tears, Emma grabbed Kleenex from the box on the nightstand before worrying, "Your dad said he was some place happy, but I don't even know if that's true or if he was just saying it to make me feel better, or to tell you so you wouldn't look for him down there. Or if he lied because he thought I loved Hook more, that I chose the same evil douchebag over him that his mom did while his murderer got to join the family with a kid and his father completely nullified his sacrifice by becoming the Dark One again and putting his second kid in peril. I'd probably have thrown myself in the River of Lost Souls. What if he did? And it's my fault."

"Dad wouldn't do that," Henry shook his head. "I'm sure no matter what he thought, wherever he was, he's in that happy place. And he was glad that you were doing something to find your happiness, even if it was with Hook. I mean, I think he knew you probably weren't ever going to love him again the way you once did."

Emma sniffed. "That doesn't really make me feel better, Kid. You need to work on that eloquence."

"It's honest. That's what Dad wanted us to be, _finally_ , isn't it? He knew he'd hurt you a lot, so much you'd probably never love him again the way he still loved you, that he wasn't ever going to be your one true love again, but you were still his, and he did everything he could to try and see that you got to be happy."

"But a fat lot of good that did," she scoffed. "He sent a pervert to stalk me into returning to a family full of psychopaths, into picking the appeal of an easily fling, on some level to spite him, probably, and also probably pixie dust, so he died and his sacrifice meant nothing. I didn't even think to put 'loving father' on his tombstone. I just picked the first basic one out of the book. All he wanted was to be a good dad. His last words were that he wanted you to know that. And I couldn't even keep that promise with two fucking words on a slab of granite? What kind of a person does that make me? Not a hero. Not a Savior. Not someone who deserves to be his one true love."

Henry regarded his mother sadly. There were some selfish or oblivious things she'd done - like his father's headstone - that he never really understood. But he didn't want Emma to be miserable about it forever, just like he didn't want Regina to think she had to be the Evil Queen.

"There's still time to keep your promise," Henry encouraged. "It's never too late to do the right thing, to fight for love, even if it's just the memory of it."

"There's that eloquence," Emma sadly agreed at the boy who was now taller than her, who spoke with a deep voice and didn't make up operation names anymore. She pulled Henry into a tight hug.

"I missed you Kid," she cried. "I missed you so much."

* * *

(a few days later)

Storybrooke finally had flowers again, though other than some dandelions blown in by the wind, they were still imported and sold by Moe French.

Emma set the budding rose atop the recently replaced gravestone, larger, more ornate in its weathered stone, more befitting of the man it represented than the generic cheap stone model she'd numbly picked out, part of her refusing still to believe it was real and he'd be back again, because he always had been before, the rest of her wanting to crush Zelena's heart.

She'd done the latter, too little too late, and that false hope had only lead her down a painful path that had given her a shit-ton more emotional and psychological scars to deal with. Neal had wanted her to find Tallahassee, even if it was without him, but the only way to do that was under a curse. She wanted to be angry with him for even suggesting that she could find it with anyone else, but Emma could only be angry with herself for making him think she didn't want to find it with him.

 _'Tis better to have loved and lost_ sounded like bullshit from someone who'd never done either, Emma thought as she stepped back and regarded epitaph she'd magically engraved.

BAELFIRE

(I KNEW HIM AS NEAL CASSIDY)

BELOVED SON

LOVING FATHER

CHERISHED OLD FRIEND

MAY YOU FIND TALLAHASSEE

EVEN IF IT'S NOT WITH US

"I don't have a magic phonebooth," Emma shakily began, "so I don't know if you can hear me, wherever you are. I don't know if you're really looking down on me and Henry, but I want you to know that I'm sorry. I'm sorry we never got Tallahassee. I'm sorry it seems like we were each too afraid to believe in true love when we had our chance... and our second chance. I'm sorry I didn't even take my fucking gloves off to hold your hand when you were dying," she cried, "But I want you to know that I'm going to fight for you now, finally, even if it's just to make sure that Henry knows the great guy you were, the great father you would have been, that your goodness, your compassion for always putting other people's happy endings before yours is more heroic than anything in that book."

She took a breath and wiped away her tears before concluding, "You might not be a legend, but you were my family long before I found the one that I'd lost and I have to believe that counts for something, that one day I'll find you again, and we can finally have that cup of coffee. I don't know when that will be, but in the meantime, you're supposed to fight for family, so I'm going to tell your story, the untold story of a good, kind, strong man. The man that I love."

Emma gripped the keychain pendant once more around her neck and laid her hand on the cool stone.

"Always have. Always will."

\- Fin -

AN: I know, it's super depressing! But I'll have another story up soon that should be a bit more in the humor/angst category.


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